Akhenaten

In the same sort of vein, Tiye is often the heroine of a Cinderella story in which a girl of humble origins marries the heir to the throne. This also contrib­utes to Tiye's star status, because the move from ordinariness to celebrity is a crucial component in making a star persona. Hence Redford's version of Tiye is 'a girl. . . from a village in Middle Egypt' who made an advantageous marriage.³⁵

This has no basis in fact and is a hoary scenario of pulp fiction about ancient Egypt, such as Jane Staunton Batty's Mefert the Egyptian: A Tale of the Time of Moses

(1890), in which a dancer catches the eye of the pharaoh and ends up queen. Tiye may not have been closely related to the royal family, but she was no village girl either. Her parents Yuia and Tuia were local aristocrats from the area around

Akhmim, whose titles indicate their close links to the royal court and the Thcban religious establishment. They probably had connections with the family of Amunhotcp Ill's mother, Mutemwiya, which may have helped bring about the marriage in the first place.³⁴

After her marriage, Tiye went on to appear more prominently in official monuments than any other queen consort before her, establishing a precedent for the visual prominence of Nefertiti in Akhenaten's reign. Exceptionally, Amunhotep associated Tiye with him as ruler in official contexts: for instance, he identified her widi the boundaries of the state itself in a series of commemorative scarabs issued early in his reign. These scarabs name Tiye as senior wife and give the names of her parents (again something exceptional), adding: 'she is the wife of a mighty king whose southern boundary is as far as Karoy, whose northern boundary is as far as Naharin'/⁵

Naharin is the western Euphrates area, Karoy between the fourdi and fifth cataracts of the Nile in what is now northern Sudan. As Egypt's southern frontier, Karoy became symbolically important later on in the reigns of Amunhotep III and Akhenaten. Some of the earliest images of Akhenaten and his relatives appear in the temples dedicated to Amunhotep and Tiye which were built as symbols of their dominion over this liminal region (sec Figure 2.5).

Nothing is known about when Tiye gave birth to Akhenaten, or whereabouts in Egypt. It could have happened almost anywhere, because New Kingdom pharaohs and their courts were more mobile than is often imagined. Journeys up and down the country were dictated partly by the official and religious calendar, partly by the pharaoh's preferred leisure activities: a trip to the marshy Delta for fishing and fowling, out to the desert for hunting. Akhenaten could have been born at the capital citics Thebes and Memphis, or at any of die palaces or smaller royal residences around Egypt, such as Medinet el-Gurob in die Fayyum. The last residence seems to have been used during the reigns of Amunhotep III and Akhenaten, and many objects supposedly from Amarna may actually have been found at Medinet el-Gurob.It was the find-spot of a famous black wooden head supposed to be Tiye, now in the Agyptisches Museum in Berlin. Whether or not it really does represent Tiye, the head has become the definitive image of her: its strong, determined features have enabled a personality to be created for Tiye around them, although nothing is known of what she was like. The name Akhen­aten was given at birth, Amunhotep 'Amun-is-content' - at oncc placed him in his father's lineage and under the protection of their family's patron god. Many Egyptians were called after the local god of their birthplace, so this choice of name could suggest that Akhenaten was born at Thebes, Amun's home territory; but royalty might not have followed such customs.